As some of you will know, we moved to the Isle of Wight at the end of 2018. My wife had to stay in Leicester to finish off at her job, but finally moved over permanently 2 weeks ago. She started her new job here on Monday and has survived the first week, in pretty sound condition.

For me, I am building my business back up. This includes attracting new students, talking to venues about possible gigs, busking, workshops and networking meetings.

So far, I have started working with 2 local students doing face to face lessons. I have also kept some of my Leicestershire and Rutland students by using Facetime and Skype (this is working really well). I have also just booked a trial lesson for an adult clarinettist. I am running a workshop for a local Saxophone ensemble in March along with giving a presentation about wedding music to a group of Brides to be at a networking workshop run by a local wedding co-ordinator.

Tonight, I am playing at Cowes Golf Club for a social evening, and next month I am playing at a Yacht Club in Cowes for their Jazz evening.

So things are moving in the right direction for us.

If you would like to talk about lessons for yourself or a friend, via Skype or Facetime or face to face, then please get in touch or pass on my details.

Valentines night this year, saw me at the Royal Esplanade Hotel in Ryde playing for their Valentine Diners.

It was my first time there, but what a lovely hotel. It is a Victorian grade 2 listed building, over looking the seafront. Beautifully decorated, with lots of original features and some quirky ones too.

The dining room has great acoustics and proved to be a great place to play for the diners entertainment whilst not intruding on their meal.

Loads of positive comments from the guests and staff, and somewhere I would love to play again.

So which side of the fence are you on regarding scales? Personally, I love them.

They are like musical vegetables, you should take in at least 7 a day!

A lot of players see them as a chore and don’t see the benefit of learning them. I can understand that thought, especially as some students who take grades, don’t have it explained to them what connection they have to the pieces they are learning, so therefore its just another thing to try and learn to help pass their grade.

I did a trial lesson with an adult player a few years ago. He had been playing for a good few years and played in various groups locally. I asked him to start off the session with a G scale over one octave, playing nice and slowly as I wanted to listen to his tone.

He made a few attempts and gave up, with the explanation that he was a ‘Jazzman!’ and was used to improvising. So we tried another scale with the same result and reason.

However I tried to break it down and help him through it, he just came back with the same reason. Now the reason I find this a bit odd, is because to play Jazz well, you must know your scales, and normally a lot more scales and different ways to play them than a classical musician may do, as this is how you improvise.

What I have worked out over the years is that each piece is written in its own dialect of the same language. In other words, music is the language and each key is a different dialect. The notes within that key that make up the scale are really the letters of the alphabet that is used within that dialect.

Learning the alphabet allows us to spell words, learning words allows us to make phrases and sentences, learning sentences allows us to make paragraphs, and learning paragraphs allows us to tell stories. That is what we try and do when we play music, we tell stories through our instrument. So most of the good musical story tellers know their scales, because they see the benefit to their art.

I am going to leave this here for now, but I will be coming back to the subject of scales, and looking at how different people remember them and how different people teach them.

I will be busy this coming Sunday, exhibiting at the Wight Bridal Wedding Show in Newport. This is a big wedding show, with loads of different suppliers available for you to talk too about your special day. I will be in the small gym and I will be playing through out the day, so come and listen and talk to me about the music for your wedding.

The weather forecast is supposed to be good, so there’s an excellent excuse to take a trip to Newport and come and see what is possible for your wedding.

There will be a 10% discount for those couples that book their music on the day.

Whenever I exhibit at a wedding fayre, I always have a wander around to see how people are promoting their business and felt that my stand was a bit dated and bland.

I have spent sometime working on a new design that sits in an A4 picture frame on my stand. The caption ‘Music Makes the Moment’ was given to me by my daughter Hannah, along with the colourful saxophone image.

So this is what I have come up with, simple, not too busy and straight forward. Ignore the outline marks around the saxophone, they only show up on a Jpeg and not on the design in the frame (I have no idea why?)

As you know, we moved to the Isle of Wight at the end of November. As with most moves, there is a lot too do, with packing, cleaning, moving, more cleaning, decorating and unpacking to contend with.

Plus, once you are at your new home, especially being self employed, there is the task of getting your business back up and running.

I was lucky enough to bring some of my original students with me via Skype and Facetime lessons, and these are working very well.

I then contacted some players that had attended previous StaxofSax workshops with me, explaining that lessons can now be done remotely, and 2 more have now joined me regularly. Through advertising on Facebook groups, I have taken on 2 local students and I have been posting cards in shop windows this week. I still have space for a few more students either face to face or Remotely so please feel free to get in touch.

Busking has been going well in both Shanklin and Ventnor, and hopefully later today, I will go and play in Ryde. A very kind lady bought me a hot chocolate yesterday as it was very cold busking.

I am exhibiting at the Wight Bridal Wedding Show at the Medina Sports centre on the 27th of January, so why not pop along for a chat about your wedding music.

I have my first wedding of the year on the 2nd of February, and definitely looking forward to that.

I will be playing at 2 local residential and day care centres in the next few weeks, these are great fun, and we always have a good singalong too.

The business is steadily moving forward and growing, which is great. Ohh nearly forgot….. we also live in the best place in the world!